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AP Article Completely Distorts the Connection Between Black Americans and Palestinians

Family members, friends, and supporters of Israelis and other nationalities who were taken hostage on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists during a deadly attack march after they began a few days march towards Jerusalem, in Latrun, Israel, Nov. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

A global influence campaign linked to Russia uses spoofed versions of legitimate news websites to misinform the public about the war between Hamas and Israel.

According to a report in Haaretz, this “Doppelgänger campaign” spreads disinformation using “replicas of websites of respected legacy media outlets across the world,” including the French newspapers Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Le Parisien; Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt and Bild in Germany; the Israeli sites Mako and Liberal in Hebrew; and the English-language Jewish Journal, a prominent Jewish American outlet.

The Dec. 17 Associated Press article, “Black American solidarity with Palestinians is rising and testing longstanding ties to Jewish allies,” left this CAMERA researcher wondering whether the storied AP had also fallen victim to the Doppelgänger campaign.

But a careful examination of the link, along with the fact that the article appears on the Lexis-Nexis news database, confirms that the piece’s provenance is authentically the AP. The piece’s reporting, on the other hand, is as detached as could be from AP’s vaunted journalistic standards. Inverting the Doppelgänger campaign, this real AP story masquerades as fake news.

Indeed, a second CAMERA researcher reacted after reading the piece: “Is this an Op-Ed? Does AP publish Op-Eds? Because it reads like one. A really terrible one.”

Intent on shoehorning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre) into the struggle of Black Americans against racism, it’s no wonder that AP video journalist Noreen Nasir and race and ethnicity editor Aaron Morrison ignore the shocking video of the final terrifying moments of the life of Joshua Mollel.

Mollel was a Black, Tanzanian agricultural intern who came to Israel in September to study farming. Hamas terrorists brutally murdered him, gleefully capturing the barbaric attack on video, and kidnapped his mutilated body to the Gaza Strip. (Warning: the difficult, very graphic video of Mollel’s murder is available here.)

Mollel was not Hamas’ only Tanzanian victim. Clemence Felix Mtenga, also a cohort in the agricultural internship, was also murdered by Hamas.

The video showing a Black man brutally slaughtered for the crime of studying in Israel fails to conform to the baseless narrative promoted by those who “see the Palestinian struggle in the West Bank and Gaza reflected in their own fight for racial equality and civil rights” — a narrative that the AP writers platform without challenge. Freely editorializing as if they are op-ed as opposed to news writers, Nasir and Morrison continue: “The recent rise of protest movements against police brutality in the U.S., where structural racism plagues nearly every facet of life, has connected Black and Palestinian activists under a common cause.”

But what common cause does Palestinian brutality, which did not spare the life of even non-Israeli Africans, have with Black Americans’ fight for racial equality and civil rights?

Indeed, the insistence on molding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into the image of the American civil rights movement is a known ploy of anti-Israel activism, falsely casting Israelis as white oppressors.

As Einat Wilf wrote in Sapir Journal in 2021 (“How Not to Think About the Conflict“):

And so, in an act of blatant neocolonialism, the American story is viewed as the universal prism through which all societies should be understood and analyzed. Blithely ignorant of the specificity of their own experience, the neocolonialists fit the square peg of the conflict into the round hole of American history. Jews are bizarrely cast as “white,” and Zionism as a movement of “white supremacy,” while Arabs, who look exactly like Jews (Fauda, anyone?), are cast as “people of color.” The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is cast as a mirror of race relations in America, but without the relevant local context of slavery, Jim Crow, or any of the specificities of Jewish, Arab, or Middle Eastern history.

The AP writers depict the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the Middle Eastern version of the American civil rights movement through the eyes of Cydney Wallace. The AP reports that the Black Jewish activist recently returned from a West Bank trip that reinforced her view that Palestinians are fighting the same civil rights battle as Black Americans. “Back home in Chicago, Wallace has navigated speaking about her support for Palestinians while maintaining her Jewish identity and standing against antisemitism. She says she doesn’t see those things as mutually exclusive,” recount Nasir and Morrison.

The AP gives no indication that Cydney Wallace’s Jewish identity is anything but mainstream. In fact, she is very much on the fringes of the widest definition of what constitutes Jewish community.

Wallace is a member of Beth Shalom B’Nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, which serves the Black Israelite community and does not represent the mainstream Jewish community including Black Jews who adhere to American Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform Judaism. While Judaism recognizes as Jewish those born within the Jewish community, or converted to Judaism under the auspices of recognized rabbinic authorities, the Black Israelite community is based on self-identification.

An in-depth Anti-Defamation League backgrounder on the very diverse Black Hebrew Israelites community explains: “The Black Hebrew Israelite (BHI) movement is a fringe religious movement that rejects widely accepted definitions of Judaism and asserts that people of color are the true children of Israel.”

Nevertheless, the AP simply ignores Wallace’s noteworthy affiliation, falsely casting her religious identity as mainstream Judaism.

Exploiting Wallace’s “Jewish identity” without disclosing the atypical nature of that identity, the lengthy article ostensibly explores the dynamics between antisemitism, the Black experience in America, and the supposed intersectionality with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In doing so, the AP writers entirely ignore antisemitism within the Palestinian population. Indeed, a 2014 global survey carried out by the Anti-Defamation League found that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are among the world’s top antisemitic “hot spots,” with 93 percent of the population harboring antisemitic views.

Sky-high Palestinian antisemitism, just like Hamas’ brutal murder of Tanzanians, belie the tale of Palestinians as the Middle Eastern equivalent of oppressed Black Americans. The same dynamic is at play as the journalists blandly downplay Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities as “the unprecedented Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas militants.”

In exactly what way was the Hamas attacks were unprecedented — was it the “historic win for the Palestinian resistance,” as anti-Israel campus groups put it, or the sheer number of civilian victims; the deliberate targeting of children, women, and elderly; the widespread rape, torture, mutilation, beheadings, burning alive, murder of children in front of parents and vice versa; the kidnapping of hundreds of Israelis and foreigners, including children and even a nine-month-old baby?

Nasir and Morr don’t say. By contrast, regarding “Israel’s ensuing bombardment of the Gaza Strip,” the duo suddenly locate “shocking images of destruction and death.” It is as if, through the authors’ eyes, there were no shocking images of destruction and death from Hamas’ attacks on Israel.

Indeed, Nasir and Morrison simply can’t shake the compulsion to withhold adjectives when it comes to the Hamas atrocities, even as they extend adjectives highlighting the severity of Israel’s response. In this vein, they persist: “None of the members of [Wallace’s] ‘Black Jerusalem’ trip anticipated it would come to a tragic end with the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 taken hostage. Since then, more than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s blistering air and ground campaign in Gaza, now in its third month.” [Emphasis added.]

The pattern downplaying Palestinian violence manifests again with respect to the hostages and Palestinian prisoners released in prisoner exchanges. The AP reports:

During a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas as part of the recent deal to free dozens of hostages seized by Hamas militants, Israel released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Many were teenagers who had recently been picked up in the West Bank for minor offenses like stone-throwing and had not been charged.

Strikingly, the reporters take care to note that many of the released Palestinian prisoners were teenagers held for “minor offenses” and were not charged. (Unmentioned are the released Palestinian prisoners convicted of attempted murder, and others charged with stabbings. In addition, the “minor” offense of stone-throwing has been known to kill and seriously injure.)

In contrast, the partisan pair provide zero details about any of the 105 released hostages of all ages — from toddlers to octagarians — whose only crime was to be Israeli (whether Jewish or Arab) or associating with Israelis (as in the case of the Tanzanian students, along with dozens of Thai and Nepali workers). Almost all of the Israeli hostages released so far have been elderly women, mothers, and children. They are guilty of no offenses and “had not been charged.”

Silence on Black Antisemitism

Palestinian antisemitism is not the only anti-Jewish bigotry which gets a pass. “The 39-year-old said she had plenty to focus on at home, where she frequently gives talks on addressing anti-Black sentiment in the American Jewish community and dismantling white supremacy in the U.S.,” the AP duo report about Wallace.

But they gloss over existing anti-Jewish sentiment in certain pockets within the Black community, including within elements of the Black Hebrew Israel movement, while expanding on Black support for Palestinians:

From Black American groups that denounced the U.S. backing of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory to Black protesters demonstrating for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, some Jewish Americans are concerned that support could escalate the threat of antisemitism and weaken Jewish-Black ties fortified during the Civil Rights Movement.

The journalists also under-report the grotesque antisemitism embedded in Black Lives Matter movement, stating:

In 2016, when BLM activists formed the coalition known as the Movement for Black Lives, they included support for Palestinians in a platform called the “Vision for Black Lives.” A handful of Jewish groups, which had largely been supportive of the BLM movement, denounced the Black activists’ characterization of Israel as a purportedly “apartheid state” that engages in “discrimination against the Palestinian people.”

But the Movement for Black Lives did not stop at false apartheid charges; it also accused Israel of genocide, which, according to the widely-accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, constitutes antisemism. As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander previously reported: “One section, headlined ‘Invest-Divest,’ accused the US, through its alignment with Israel, of complicity in what the authors called the ‘genocide that is taking place against the Palestinian people’ and Israeli ‘apartheid.’”

Other BLM manifestations of antisemitism include at least one documented riot organized by a BLM leader in Los Angeles targeting a historic Jewish neighborhood.

And, as our colleagues at CAMERA UK have noted, “BLM groups in Los Angeles, Chicago and DC issued statements . . .  literally supporting Hamas’s barbarism. BLM Chicago tweeted an image of a Hamas paraglider with a Palestinian flag attached to his parachute and the caption ‘I stand with Palestine’ before evidentially deleting the tweet following criticism.”

The far left are showing their true colors. Here Black Lives Matter Chicago are celebrating the butchers who arrived on paragliders at a music festival and brutalized and murdered hundreds of defenseless young people at a music festival. Difficult to comprehend. pic.twitter.com/lduVCnzgdj

— Eoghan McCabe (@eoghan) October 10, 2023

Critically, some Black Hebrew Israelites completely reject Wallace’s notion that the Palestinian experience is analogous to the Black American experience, and argue that Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre underscores the commonalities between the Jewish and Black stories. But AP, which boasts that it seeks to “expand the reach of factual reporting,” silenced voices and facts which contradict its predetermined narrative.

A message from this Hebrew Israelite to the Black and LGBTQ communities. #MustWatch pic.twitter.com/dl0gJ1BfK8

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) December 18, 2023

The AP’s effort to pass off the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the Middle Eastern doppelgänger of the civil rights movement, with the Palestinians playing the part of Black Americans battling against racism, is nothing short of a parody of journalism. In short, it’s a real news outlet playing at fake news.

With research by Adam Levick.

Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office. A version of this article previously appeared on the CAMERA websiteSee also “Black Lives Matter, JVP’s Deadly Exchange, and Israel” and “The BLM Movement and Antisemitism

The post AP Article Completely Distorts the Connection Between Black Americans and Palestinians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire

Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.

Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.

Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.

Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”

As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.

“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.

Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.

The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.

Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.

Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.

Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.

The post Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel

People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas

Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.

“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.

“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.

Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.

The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.

In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.

“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.

“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.

In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.

Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.

In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.

“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”

Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.

Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.

To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.

In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.

Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.

Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.

The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.

The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns

Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak

The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.

Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.

With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.

The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.

Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.

Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.

According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.

With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.

In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.

The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.

Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.

The post Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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